92 Art of Sapsucking [SECOND WEEK 



sapsucker likes to steal from our pails or to tap the trees 

 for himself. But throughout part of the year he is satis- 

 fied with an insect diet and chooses the time when the 

 sap begins to flow downward in the autumn for commit- 

 ting his most serious depredations upon the tree. It was 

 formerly thought that this bird, like its near relatives, 

 the downy and hairy woodpeckers, was forever boring for 

 insects; but when we examine the regularity and symme- 

 try of the arrangement of its holes, we realise that they 

 are for a very different purpose than the exposing of an 

 occasional grub. 



Besides drinking the sap from the holes, this bird 

 extracts a quantity of the tender inner bark of the tree, 

 and when a tree has been encircled for several feet up 

 and down its trunk by these numerous little sap wells, 

 the effect becomes apparent in the lessened circulation of 

 the liquid blood of the tree; and before long, death is 

 certain to ensue. So the work of the sapsucker is injurious, 

 while the grub-seeking woodpeckers confer only good upon 

 the trees they frequent. 



And how pitiful is the downfall of a doomed tree! 

 Hardly has its vitality been lessened an appreciable amount, 

 when somehow the word is passed to the insect hordes who 

 hover about in waiting, as wolves hang upon the outskirts 

 of a herd of buffalo. In the spring, when the topmost 

 branches have received a little less than their wonted 

 amount of wholesome sap and the leaves are less vigorous, 

 the caterpillars and twig-girdlers attack at once. Ich- 

 neumen flies and boring beetles seem to know by signs 

 invisible to us that here is opportunity. Then in the fall 



